


Pair the Spares

by Darkshoebox



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: And a workplace relations course or two, Background Finnrey, Holdo survived because I say so, Hux has had enough of Supreme Leader Ren, Kylo needs an anger management course, Lando is in this because why not, Multi, One-sided Kylo Ren/Rey, Rose is having the worst day but is still wonderful, This thing grew a plot and ran away with it basically
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-02-17 06:03:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13070646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkshoebox/pseuds/Darkshoebox
Summary: Rose gets captured by the First Order after the battle of Crait. It's a good thing that the First Order is too much of a flaming mess for anyone to bother properly interrogating her. It's a bad thing that the First Order is so much of a flaming mess that she ends up stuck on the same escape pod as the new - and newly deposed - Supreme Leader.Romance to ensue eventually. Hijinks to ensue in the meantime.(Rose-centric, full of TLJ spoilers and yep I am dead serious about the pairing, thanks for asking.)*Updates on Mondays*(Not EVERY Monday, but when updates happen it's on Monday.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was stuck at the airport for 24 hours and this fic happened. Erm. Enjoy?

For a fleeting moment the stormtrooper turned traitor turned proud rebel scum, who was still getting the hang of Finn as a name that was his to be called by, felt happy.

He was alive. Rey was alive and _there_ , skin glowing and face radiant with euphoria and relief as rocks floated around her, freeing the path for what remained of the Resistance.

Both of them shot forward, running a paradoxical race to be the first to wrap their arms around the other. He held her, laughing. Joy was another thing he was still trying to get the hang of. Sometimes the emotion, unused to being allowed free rein, got away from him. Yet in that couple of seconds that it was just them, together again, the sounds of the world swallowed by the battering ram of Rey's heart beating against his chest, he couldn't care less how far it ran.

They were alive. Hopefully they would all be alive by the end of the day.

_All._

The thought was ice water thrown on warmth that had barely had time to bloom. His face fell. So did his arms. There went that happy moment. All couldn't be alive by the end of the day.

He'd remembered.

"Finn." Rey's voice should have made something lit to fend off the clammy, freezing darkness clawing his way up inside him. He'd dreamed about her voice on and off while fighting his way out if the coma he'd fallen into at Starkiller Base. He'd daydreamed about it even more often after waking. Now he heard her as if her voice reached him through a bad connection, the words she spoke static-filled disturbance in his ears.

She'd noticed the change. She shook him, none too gently. Gentleness was, to her as it was to him, a unfamiliar solar system she was still learning to navigate. She repeated his name, inquisitive this time.

"Finn?"

"Rose," he replied, or tried to. He choked up, breaking the name in half, and stood there motionless as rocks rained down and the rebels, finally woken from their stupefied awe, resolved to move.

Poe passed them by along with the fast running river of bodies, stopped, backtracked, placed hands on both their shoulders as he rattled off _helloPoeDamerongreatofinallymeetyouFinnbuddyweneedtomove_ in a single unbroken string. Rey was still staring at him, seeing him - for the first time since defecting Finn wished for his helmet back, if only to have something to hide his tears behind - and understanding nothing.

She hadn't known Rose, which was wrong, unfair. She would have liked her. They would have liked each another. Rose would have been all awe at first, drowned her in a breathless, unstoppable barrage of words, but after . . .

He shook his head. No after. Rose had died on the salt plains, crushed and burned when her sky-speeder knocked his out of the cannon's mouth. Died to save him - and now it felt as if his tears would never cease, but at least he had managed to quiet the howl that wanted to cut its way out of his throat.

"Who is Rose?" Rey asked, her hand on his wrist, pulling him along to catch up with the retreating rebel army. Probably sensible thinking on her part. He'd forgotten how it was that you made your legs move.

Still, this time he didn't choke on the answer.

"Was. A friend."

 

***********

 

Rose Tico believed that she had learned a couple of things about bravery over the course of the past day.

Or had it been two days? The contents of her head had been overturned and blended to a sticky paste, leaving her sense of time all but non-existent.

Anyway. She'd learned a couple of things, that was right. About how to be brave.

For most of her life she'd had one benchmark for bravery, and that benchmark had been her sister Paige. She'd wanted to be like Paige when she grew up. For that matter, she'd continued to want to be like Paige even after she was, by all available measures, grown.

 _What would Paige do_ was the mantra that had carried her through many a day where she'd wanted to curl up in some hidden nook of the ship with a blanket around her and her ears covered, humming to cover up the noise of the fighting that was a unfortunate fixture in her life.

Rose had once heard someone claim that there was no sound in space. A lifetime of waking up to things crashing into and exploding against whatever flying tin of death she currently called home made her beg to differ. There was sound, and it wasn't nice. Once heard, you didn't want to hear it again, ever.

Regardless, even on the bad days, the worst days, the days where it looked for all the world like hope had been taken outside and shot, she'd made herself get up, grab her toolbox and do her work, humming loud enough to tune out everything around her as she tinkered away.

The humming was the one scrap she was willing to throw at the frightened mouse that lived inside her. _What would Paige do_ , chanted in her head even as she hummed a more cheerful song, was the lock that kept the mouse caged.

As for what Paige was doing . . . well, usually she would be outside, flying under enemy fires, saving people in ways big and brave. Because Paige was brave.

Rose had always known that she wasn't. She feared for herself too often, too much. Paige never seemed to fear for herself. Only, and only ever, for other people.

  
At some point - she couldn't say when or how, it had been one of those organic things that creep over you slowly until one day at last you notice that they've covered you whole - it had dawned on Rose that she would never be like Paige.

Still, she'd kept saying the words. It was a habit so strongly ingrained that she couldn't shake it and besides, she didn't want to. She might never do the things Paige would do, save others fighting at the front line while risking a horrible death, but she could go halfway and help in smaller ways. Her ways.

She liked to think about her tools as akin to a medic's instruments. They healed ships the same way she wished she could heal this wounded, bleeding mess of a galaxy. Or that someone would heal it. Someone braver than her. Someone braver even than Paige, although she had trouble imagining someone like that existing.

That had been how she thought, before.

Then she'd met Finn. Finn, who'd gone from being a hero in her eyes to just another coward who'd fed the mouse inside him and let it run free, and then to someone who had made her want to take a look at her concept of bravery, turned it on its head and, perhaps unwittingly, planted in her the seed of an odd but wonderful idea.

The idea that Rose Tico might have some bravery hidden inside her after all.

She'd done a lot, in that time-span with question marks around it, that she would categorize as brave acts if she were to hear about them in second hand, someone else having done them. She'd feared for herself throughout the ordeal, true. Then again, she'd also feared for Finn, for the children of Canto Bight, for the Resistance and, by extent, the fate of the galaxy. She might have feared for them more than herself.

Perhaps the same had held true for Paige. Perhaps she'd been terrified, all those times she'd wrapped her in a tight but hurried hug before dashing off to her bomber, to yet another battle, and her inner chorus of _I don't want to die_ had been drowned out by the louder shouts of _I don't want everyone else to die_ , to the point where one might believe that was the only voice inside her.

Anyway. There was no Paige left to do the things Paige would do, just Rose. Not even Rose and Finn. Just Rose.

And Rose didn't feel very good being Rose at the moment.

A ringing in her ears and a splitting headache might be an improvement over dead, which was what she'd expected to be by now, but those things were still no picnic to endure. She'd especially have liked for her ears to work. The blindfold across her eyes prevented her from sousing out her surroundings.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been awake for. Could be a few minutes, could be a couple of hours. With her main sources of sensory input impaired, time, already scrambled, seemed to trickle by at a slug's pace.

To distract herself - and hopefully calm herself some - she counted up to ten in her head, then down from ten, then back up. She'd gone through like a million rounds of tens when something happened.

The metal band restraining her sight, which one would expect to have been warmed by the long contact with her skin but remained as ice, snapped open at the latch in the middle.

Rose found herself facing a man. Pale skinned, oddly featured, face framed by long, haggard black hair and a pair of funny ears.

Behind him she could see a wall. The wall revealed more of her circumstances than the stranger to whom it served as background. It confirmed the suspicion that had formed the moment she was awake. She would need to be braver even than Paige, if she was - and that wall certainly suggested it, as few other ships and certainly no Resistance ship had walls so clean and rust free - the First Order's prisoner.

A wave of nausea hit her like a fist to the stomach, but she didn't barf and didn't gasp. She nearly had the hang of the whole bravery thing. No sense in breaking the streak.

Her attempt to turn her head was foiled by two metal plaques set at each side. Forward, down and up were the only ways to look. Up showed her nothing of interest. Down showed her own body encased in yet more, thicker metal bands. Her clothes, filthy with salt and red dirt and dry blood and grime, were doing an admirable job of tarnishing them. She very nearly smiled at the fact.

The 'nearly' had been noticeable. When she looked forward again the stranger was staring at her. She examined him for want of anything else to examine, drawing conclusions from his hair - First Order soldiers never wore it that long and hanging loose, so he must not be one; black was not its natural color; Fifty credits said he cut it himself - his clothes - all black; not a uniform - his hands - short nails, bereft from the black polish she'd half expected; palms facing forward, empty.

It was that emptiness that Rose focused on. Nowhere that she could see, although granted, she wasn't in a position from which she could see a lot, did she spot a weapon, torture instrument or food tray - the existence of food trays in her immediate future being a question mark, whereas the other options, not so much.

The smack landed hard, knocking her head back against the slab.

She didn't see it coming. She'd been staring at his hands, but they hadn't moved. Still, she couldn't have imagined getting struck. She could taste blood spilling from the walls of her cheeks where they'd been smashed against her teeth. Paige would have spat the load onto the stranger's face, but perhaps . . . doing what Paige would have done was the wrong move here. She'd just been hit by Force knew what . . .

Her mouth formed an o of understanding.

Not just that, but suddenly it was clear to her that a crucial detail had flown over her head. The man's lips were moving and had, in point of fact, been moving for a good long time, while the rest of his face showed ever increasing irritation.

His face. No helmet, _why_? He should be wearing the helmet. She'd have known at once who he was if he'd worn the helmet. She was panicking. She should stop doing that. It wasn't like it made a difference that she had before her a fallen Jedi, armed with the might of the Dark Side, instead of a random stormtrooper armed with a blaster. Either could and would kill her just as dead.

She was still panicking.

Kylo Ren did not look like she would have expected him to look behind the black radiator that had for so long been the only face he was known by. Granted, she'd never sought to form a picture of what the enemy might look like, but if asked she would, going by what was now common knowledge among rebels, have replied that he'd probably look like General Leia. Which he decisively did not. Perhaps they had the same hair. Perhaps that was why he dyed it.

She really really really needed to stop panicking.

His lips were moving again. Attempting to interrogate her, if she dared venture an educated guess.

She made a sound. The sound wanted to be a word, a start to the sentence _I can't hear anything_! Likely it didn't come out like that. Kylo Ren's expression turned ugly at whatever utterance escaped her, which was saying something. He hadn't been what one might call classically handsome to begin with.

Suddenly there was pure agony where before she'd nursed a fading migraine. Agony, accompanied by what felt like a nail sinking through the soft tissue of her brain until it met the inside of her skull on the other side.

She screamed. She couldn't hear how high her voice went, but it left her throat feeling raw after only a single eternity had passed.

And then it stopped, as abruptly as it had started.

Rose shut her mouth, blinking fast, breaths heavy and out of synch, in time to see Kylo Ren run off through a door that slid open and closed too fast for her to make out anything beyond it. Shaking, too tired to wonder whether he’d gotten all or anything he wanted out of her, where he’d gone and what would happen to her now, she allowed her eyelids to drop and surrendered to exhaustion.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million thanks to everyone who took the time to read this. Twice as many thanks to all of you who left feedback of any kind. <3

After another uncharted amount of time slipped by, Rose woke.

She discovered that the ringing in her ears had subsided, replaced by a sensation of warm fullness. When she shook her head to clear it, liquid sloshed inside.

She had no time to wonder nor worry about what had been put in her and why. As her eyes fluttered open, stealing a cautious glance underneath her lashes, she also discovered herself facing a man.

Not Kylo Ren. Not someone she had difficulty recognizing either. General Hux was nigh impossible to mistake. Even if he weren't the sole redheaded First Order officer of note, she'd been on the receiving end of the same merciless glare he now aimed at her when he'd ordered Finn and her dragged off to meet their end at Captain Phasma's hands.

That time he'd barely paid her mind, having been more focused on Finn. One could tell there was a personal grudge at play with those two, whereas she was just another worthless rebel. Something to be despised, sure enough, but dispassionately and only on general principle.

The prospect of being the sole bearer of that glare sent her breathing momentarily out of control.

She shook her head again. Again she heard sloshing. Frantic now, she shook it harder, until warm liquid spilled down the side of her neck.

General Hux turned away, his lips pressing in a displeased line. He barked something she continued to be deaf to at a nearby droid, turned back and smacked her.

Somehow he managed to rebound his hand on her jawline, causing it to double back at the wrist. Even deaf, Rose could tell there'd been a crack.

General Hux gathered his hand to his chest, face flushed with ire, nostrils flaring, mouth tightening further when he caught her staring at him with wide eyes. He made his arm drop to his side, where it hung, fingers twitching ever so slightly. Then he glared again, spat, missing his probable target and having the spit land on her shoulder, before stepping aside with an ungainly shuffle so that the droid could roll over.

A mechanical arm extended a rubber finger covered in a gellified substance that Rose, thankfully, recognized on sight. She kept her head still as the droid slathered her ears in bacta. It wasn't lost on her that they were healing her in order to make the incoming interrogation more efficient. Yet she felt relieved all the same when her eardrums finally picked up the whiring, noisy motion of the retreating metal arm.

Unfortunately, her relief must have shown on her face. General Hux was upon her in an instant, moving the droid aside with an imperious shove.

"Ren-" Here his voice caught. Rose hadn't thought it possible for anyone to display more aggravation than what he had already, and saw herself proven wrong. The general swallowed, going from looking as if he'd smelled something foul to looking as if he'd been made to ingest said foulness. His next words were chewed out through gritted teeth, rendered close to inaudible. "The _Supreme Leader_ couldn't finish with you earlier and is . . . _otherwise occupied_ at the moment."

On cue, a high and terrifying cacophony sang through the walls. Rose flinched. General Hux flinched harder before catching himself, huffing and rolling his eyes ceiling high.

Her ears weren't so far along with their healing that she could make it out beyond doubt, but she got the impression that he was counting to ten under his breath.

After a minute of banging, clanging and distant growling that at times might be confounded with wailing - did they have a wounded rathtar rampaging through the ship, or something? - the commotion died down as suddenly as it had begun.

General Hux squeezed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger before turning away from her, twinning his hands behind his back and starting a round of what could only be described as nervous pacing. Here was a man, Rose thought, who was decidedly having a bad day.

She waited to see whether he would acknowledge her existence or contribute to the worsening of _her_ already terrible day. However, for the time being General Hux was too busy dealing with whatever went on in his head that had drained his skin from pale to chalk white.

She took the unexpected break for a chance to think.

Fixing her eyes elsewhere but on General Hux's attempt to have his boots drill a circle on the floor, Rose made herself carry out the long overdue task of thinking a way out of the pile of bantha poop she'd been dropped in.

At first she entertained the idea that someone might come save her. Then she remembered that the Resistance didn't even know she was alive. They'd seen her sky-racer torn to very small pieces right before their eyes. Rose herself wasn't entirely sure how she'd survived.

For that matter, did she know for certain that there was still a Resistance? The possibility was hideous and intrusive, a hope poisoner, but the truth was-

No. No. _Think, Rose._ They wouldn't interrogate her unless there was a Resistance she could inform on. If she lived, the Resistance must also. Besides, General Hux and Kylo Ren wouldn't be so pissy and moody, respectively, if their only opponents had been obliterated.

Nevertheless, she couldn't think of anyone who stood a legitimate chance of staging a successful rescue. She was only a maintenance worker who'd stumbled her way into an adventure. Important, because every man and woman was important and valuable, but not so important that the Resistance would waste their already scarce ressources to save her.

As for people who would want to save her because they cared about Rose Tico as an individual, her closest friends were her fellow mechanics. Try as she might she couldn't picture Jenna, a prodigy at saving dying engines but hopeless at anything that didn't require a screw driver, or old Zsu Malric, prone to ignoring his bad leg to climb up and down shafts to replace fried wires, storming a First Order ship.

Granted, half the things she'd done with Finn hadnt been things she expected from herself either, so perhaps she was being unfair. Perhaps old Zsu would reveal himself as a Jedi in hiding, his bad leg a sham. Perhaps Jenna would turn out to be General Hux's long lost sister - she was also a ginger, it wouldn't be _that_ strange! - and pop up in the nick of time to intercede on her behalf. But the chances of either of those were, well. Slim to say the least.

Paige would have come, if she were alive. The Force itself and all the Sith in the galaxy wouldn't have stopped her. It was one among the million reasons why Rose deeply, desperately missed Paige.

Lastly, there was Finn. The issue with Finn was that . . . frankly, she wasn't sure of what and how much he felt for her. By the same token, she wasn't sure of her own feelings about him. She suspected she might be a tiny bit in love, or at least getting there. Love wasn't the reason why she had risked her life to get him out of the cannon's path. She'd done that because he was a great person, a good person, a person worth keeping alive. But love was why she doubted that she'd see him barge in at any moment.

Finn was already in love. Finn had been looking for another girl, one he actually knew to be alive, since before they'd met. Rose did believe that she was more than a faint blip on his radar, despite having known him for only a day or so. It had been a life altering day, and she was certain he cared about her.

Still, there was caring, and then there was _I will move the sky and walk through endless fire and face armies to see you safe._ Which was a point she wasn't too sure he'd reached. That she'd be unreasonable in expecting him to have reached.

She sighed. Best not to have her hopes hanging on an unlikely rescue. Best to hope in herself, insofar as Rose Tico was worth having hope in.

_What would Paige do?_

The question echoed from the depths of her mind, comfortable and familiar like a pair of old boots, rising to stave off her crippling fear. What would Paige-

Rose understood, with a jolt, that the mantra that had kept her chin raised her entire life so far might have at last been rendered obsolete.

_What. Would. Paige. Do._

She regarded the sentence the same way she would stare at the entrails of a ship, all chips and wires and parts, drawing a mental map of what fit where, noting what needed replacing. She dismantled, removed this, added that, until left with a sentence that once operational, ran though her brain just as smoothly as her old mantra.

_What can Rose do?_

Immediately she slapped on two addendums: a) what did Rose know how to do, and b) what were the tools Rose had at her disposal.

Answer a) Rose knew how to make friends and how to make a machine do anything. She also knew how to shoot a blaster - Paige had taught her - but it wasn't a skill she'd put to the test often, so it might not count.

Answer b) eyes ears mouth brain.

It wasn't a lot. In fact, it was little more than nothing. Just enough for hope to live on.

Her attention got diverted by a stormtrooper who entered, paused for a second upon registering that General Hux was undergoing a slow descent into madness and, when the frazzled man utterly failed to register his presence, coughed politely.

Rose wondered what his face would look like under the helmet. She couldn't help but picture Finn.

She also couldn't help but think back to Hays Minor. Remember her parents, sick from worry when her mother had discovered she was pregnant for the third time after the planet had fallen under First Order rule. Neither had been keen on prayer, but they had prayed then, prayed to the Force for it to be another girl, _please_ , another girl. A boy would be taken away, twisted into a monster, have white armor slapped on him as soon as he grew tall enough for it to fit.

They'd fretted for nothing. That child had never been born. But other boys had, some so small that they would grow up not remembering where they'd come from, that their mothers had cried and screamed for them until their voices broke as they saw them taken.

She wondered about the man who stood there, waiting for his superior officer to regain a measure of sanity. What was his history? How would his life have turned out, if the First Order hadn't showed up to derail it like it had hers and Paiges?  
  
"General Hux, the Supreme Leader ask-" the stormtrooper began, to be at once cut off.

 _"I know_." General Hux's eyes held a manic glint, his voice a near hysterical edge. "Tell the Supreme Leader that I may take a while. The prisoner decided to shake out the bacta. I haven't even started yet."

"At once, were the Surpreme Leader's words, General." The stormtrooper delivered the sentence without hesitation, his voice wavering only on the last word. Rose got the impression that although he'd rather not have to oppose either man, left with no choice he preferred to heed the one who could choke the life out if him with a thought.

General Hux's lip curled. He set off without a word, without glancing back at her once. She'd become furniture in his eyes, Rose realized, wondering if that deserved worry or relief.

A beat later, the stormtrooper and the droid followed suit, the door shutting behind them with a definite _wham_.

Rose was left alone to resume her thoughts.

Being cheerful and likeable and prone to having others feel positively towards her would be of no use in a place like this, with these people who were more like droids with pain and destruction as their main directive. Her skills as a mechanic might be of some use if she had her hands free, but with them encased in hard metal that you'd need a lightsaber to cut through . . .

A black thought occurred to her.

It was a thought that she knew would never in a million light years have occurred to Paige. She felt shame from the bottom of her soul for allowing it to form in the first place, for entertaining the mouse inside her as it chirped the words ' _Try to cut a deal'._

She shook her head, stuck the mouse back in its cage. Just because she wasn't capable of being Paige, she shouldn't throw up her hands and be like that slicer. If she had to die . . .

Well, she didn't want to die. So a way would need to be found. A way that wouldn't involve treason or cowardice. Because if she did die anyway, she'd die a rebel through and through.

_Think, Rose, think!_

She didn't have a chance to do much further thinking, because the doors slid open again to let General Hux stalk back inside.

He'd only been gone for a minute. From the looks of it he'd spent that minute stuck in a blender. His clothes, formerly crisply ironed, were a crumpled mess. The color of his face matched that of his hair, which stuck out in every direction.

Rose's first thought upon catching sight of him was that he looked like he'd gone for a quickie. Then she took in his expression and decided that if that was indeed the case, she very much did not want to know what General Hux's bedroom life was like. This was a man who what two seconds away from suffering a rage stroke.

Which - and that ought to have been the first thing she considered - was bad news for her. Powerless and at the mercy of an unbalanced sadist wasn't where you should like to be when the sadist in question had a bone to pick with the world. He might get the urge to work out his issues on whatever or whoever was most convenient.

And she was undeniably convenient.

_Think, Rose, think. What can you do?_

Nothing. That was the sad, hard truth. She could do nothing. Just wait and stare and hope. Talk, perhaps but what might she say? Beg for her life? That he wouldn't hurt her? He'd laugh.

Although laughter would mean that he'd be amused, which would be a step up from overflowing with hate and desperate to work it off, so perhaps it was worth a try.

She prepared to beg. Psyched herself up for it. Opened her mouth. Felt it struggle around a _please,_ turned against her by an idea that stirred inside her half-formed, making it so that something else left her lips. 

"I'm sorry that it looks like you're having a bad day, General." She meant every word, though it was herself she felt sorry for. Regardless, her delivery rang sincere. She thought that might be what gave the general pause. Instead of slapping her or snarling or growing an unhealthier shade of crimson, he blinked twice, lips parting, tongue snaking out to wet them. Thrown. Left out of sorts.

He came back to himself quickly. Shook his head. Sucked in a deep breath. Snarled:

"Not as bad as yours is about to become, I should think. _Rebel scum,_ " he added after a beat, as if the inclusion of the insult were standard procedure that he'd almost forgotten to follow.

It was significant, though, that such a slip had happened in the first place. It meant that a dent had been made.

Rose's next line came after deep, if hurried, pondering of consequence and reward.

"It doesn't matter if my day gets worse, though, I mean, does it? I mean, I'm not important. My bad day can't really be compared to your bad day, because we aren't close to being on the same level even if we are doing similarly awful."

She wasn't sure he'd followed her onslaught of words in full, as she'd spoken at a breakneck pace, eager to make the sour untruths leave her lips as fast as possible. Still, he'd caught the gist of what she tried to get across.

Caught it, then turned its catch around in his head, examining it from all angles and frowning upon finding that it put him at odds with himself. If he were a droid, she'd have guessed he'd been given a task that conflicted with his programming. The reality, she suspected, probably wasn't that far off.

" _Yes_ ," General Hux stated, shoulders shaking slightly, as if it physically hurt him to have to declare his agreement. "Yes, that is . . . _accurate_."

"Yeah. Yes." She nodded vigorously, thanking the stars for having her born with a trustworthy face. Not even the likes of General Hux were immune to it. Although he regarded her with suspicion, it felt like the base level suspicion that resulted from being too worked up to consider that anything uplifting might happen. "If I were an important person in the Resistance, which I'm not, I just do maintenance, it wouldn't sit right with me to be told to go repair an engine. I guess interrogating prisoners would be your version, or the First Order's version, of that."

She said it in tones of musing rather than questioningly, to spare the general from working himself up trying to answer her. After it felt like he'd had enough time to sort out his thoughts, for good or ill, Rose went right on babbling.

She wasn't thinking anymore, but running on raw inspiration. General Hux was a living breathing person - albeit an evil living breathing person person - rather than a droid, but what were people other than insanely complicated yet vexingly frail machines, produced in massive quantities because hardly anyone ever stopped to consider the cost of maintaining them?

"There's this boy I work with, you know. He's a brilliant mechanic but completely self-centered. He'll go take care of his own business and leave his work unfinished, and does this kind of thing constantly. So the rest of us always have to pick up his slack and it's just. Annoying. He's annoying. Sometimes all I want to do is yell at him or tell on him or hit him over the head with something heavy, but he's the great great something of the late Admiral Ackbar, so. It would be more trouble than it's worth and I'd probably come out worse off." She fleetingly pondered if it would be too on the nose to add 'and his name is Kyle.' With General Hux in the state he was, however . . . "His name is Kyle."

"He's worthless." The general's reply came automatic, all but spat out in tandem with a reflexive twitch of his eye. "A bratty, sulking child, hiding behind the talent and the bloodline he was lucky enough to be born to. No vision whatsoever, sloppy and unthinking in everything he does, a slave to his own temper . . .

He continued ranting in the same vein for some time. Rose never allowed her gaze to stray from his face, fashioning herself into a picture of rapt attention, although in truth she turned her ears off when he began to repeat himself about the sulking after the first minute.

One minute was enough for her to assess what she was dealing with and sketch out how to tackle it. She was lucky. Rage had rendered the man in front of her transparent.

General Hux was an ancient boiler, full of kinks and issues unresolved, threatening to blow its top. Dangerous, volatile and unpredictable, yet not hopelessly unmanageable if placed in skilled hands. She'd just started unscrewing the lid that would allow her to access its core, but from the sounds it made and the smoke coming off the top, she could hazard a guess of how to handle it best.

Venting, validation, vengeance. Three things that this bundle of nerves stretched to their breaking point desperately craved and would never admit to craving. Strange tools, sure, but seeing as they were all she had . . .

She felt a bit better. She had a plan. Not a plan that stood a chance of giving her back her freedom, but a plan that might bring some benefit to the Resistance in the long run. A plan that for now, was a decent enough buoy to keep her from sinking into despair.

Paige used to say that when the space outside the nearest port hole appeared darker than ever, that was when you should make the effort of smiling at any small spot of brightness that could be gleaned. What Rose had cobbled together wasn't a star in the blackness, not a beacon, not even a minuscule flame.

Still, it might be a spark.

She forced her mind back to General Hux. They'd long ago crossed the point of pretending that they were talking about a lazy mechanic named Kyle. The general was airing his grievances straight from his withered prune of a heart.

". . . and, in short, the longer the First Order remains under the clumsy thumb of a teenager shaped like a man who desires to rule but knows nothing about the elementary mechanics of ruling and is prone to wasting a third of our ammunition on a hologram because the mere mention of Skywalker turns him irrational, blind to everything around him and dead to reason-"

"Ammunition that costs enough to have places like Canto Bight rolling in riches," Rose interjected.

It was clear from the surprise that passed like a fleeting shadow across the general's face that he himself had gotten so carried away he'd forgotten he wasn't alone.

"Precisely," he hissed, signs of inner conflict about conceding that anything of value could issue from rebel lips absent.

He ran a hand up and down his hair in a steady, practiced sequence of movements, slicking the strands back to their proper positions, and adjusted his collar. Going through those motions appeared to have a grounding effect on him. When he spoke again only a slight flush remained in his cheeks.

"At this rate, he'll destroy the First Order before the Resistance even gets close."

"I'm surprised," Rose pondered aloud, speech dragging, because now she wandered into treacherous waters. At the very least he'd strike her for her next sentence. That was alright. What mattered was that she got his wheels turning. "Every piece of First Order propaganda I've seen paints the Resistance as a group of cowards and criminals that's out to throw the galaxy into chaos. But you tell me that the First Order itself is degenerating into one big mess under it's new leadership, without anyone being brave enough to do something about it?"

" _Brave_?" Oh no, this didn't figure in her plan. Nowhere did it call for General Hux to hover an inch away from her face while spitting with rage. His saliva was pink and his mouth smelled like iron. A gift from his new master, maybe? Or a consequence of literally biting his tongue too much around him? "Our Supreme Leader is a spoiled would-be-Sith who wields near unstoppable power and a weapon that logic dictates should not exist, yet exists nevertheless and will, mark my words, cut down anyone who even dares breathe dissent in his vicinity. To act against-"

"But general," Rose interrupted, allowing her voice to tremble freely and with irrepressible, if fabricated from whole cloth, respect. This was where the wheels either would start churning away in a productive fashion, or not. Turn the key. Watch the parts come to life. Make them dance. "You just said that the Supreme Leader is an unsalvageable fool who, if confronted with anything that reminds him of Luke Skywalker, becomes irrational to the point where he'll completely lose sight of the world that surrounds him. Sure-"

The General's gloved hand fell over her mouth, clamping it closed. She swallowed a panicked squeak and fought to stop her eyes from bugging out in terror. Lips barely moving, he delivered a raspy whisper directly in her ear.

" _You are not to finish that sentence."_

"Mmlright." She punctuated her agreement with a few passive aggressive headshakes, hoping that the backwards and forwards sway of hair and face might convince him to step back. It worked, somewhat. General Hux retreated a step, his eyes on her, his sight set far away, his thin lips stretched out to form something truly disturbing: a smile.

Rose held her breath. It didn't level her spiking heart rate, but nevermind. Right now such matters scored low on her priority list.

Some part of General Hux had been set in motion. She could see thoughts spin fast and erratic in the depths of the soulless glass of his eyes. She just couldn't be sure that they were the thoughts she'd meant to steer him towards. He'd reached whatever decision he had before she'd paved even a third of the way she needed him to walk, making it all too likely that he'd strayed off course and arrived somewhere else.

Chances were she wouldn't like that somewhere else the slightest bit.

"We'll resume this another time," he told her eventually, his voice carrying an odd blend of derision, since it was her he spoke to, and excitement, since his spinning thoughts had, by all appearances, coalesced in a nice and thick layer or murderous intent.

Then he left.

Rose pushed out of her lungs the breath that'd overstayed its welcome, wondering, although by now it was too late for wondering to change anything, if it was a good thing that she'd worked to bring about.

She tried hard not to think about the fact that she wasn't likely to make it long enough to know for sure.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter was late because Christmasseries. Sorry, guys. <3

  
General Hux didn't come back to finish the interrogation. Nor, for that matter, did he send anyone else in his stead.

Rose spent the next couple of hours, or what she believed to be a couple of hours but who knew, really, alone, moving through the three phases those faced with hurdles comparable to ' _So you have been captured by the First Order'_ tended to undergo.  
  
Phase one, fear. She might not have left that one. Her terror had shrunk to a background discomfort that she could almost ignore, but that almost was key. She was still afraid, just managing it.

Phase two, bargaining. In the end she'd handled General Hux well enough without having to resort to begging, although if the definition of bargaining were stretched to accommodate any and all attempt to alter her present circumstances, then she was still entrenched in that stage with no intent to move onwards.

She had, however, come to accept that until and unless something else happened, she'd exhausted every option available when it came to freeing herself. There were only so many times you could contort yourself in unlikely positions before reality set in.

Acceptance _wasn't_ the third phase. The third phase, Rose had found out, was boredom.

The room-cell-torture parlor was sorely lacking in sources of distraction, let alone entertainment. Nothing to look at other than walls and floors the same even, dull dark grey of metal unkissed by rust.

She wasn't complaining. Boredom was the last thing she'd complain about. It just made it so that her focus couldn't land anywhere but inwards, bringing her full circle and landing her back at full force in phase one.

The first time Rose had feared for her life she'd been six. The Ticos had been in route to Hays Major. Her first interplanetary journey. She'd been over the moon, literally and figuratively, gawking at everything, questioning everything, pleading with anyone willing to indulge her to explain every part of the ship down to the bolts and screws.

Eventually her boundless excitement had turned out to be a bit too much for her parents, who'd sent her to play with Paige while their ears received some much needed rest. Rose had meant to do as they bade her, truly. She'd nodded and set off to track down her sister, who'd been spending the journey hanging out with two Twi'lek girls she'd befriended. However, along the way she'd gotten sidetracked by a door.

It had been a fascinating door. It's lock more fascinating still, being nonexistent as far as her rapt eyes could see.

A magnetic safety latch, Rose had been told afterwards, once everyone was done telling her off. She hadn't mustered the bravado to point out that she had already figured that out on her own, or she wouldn't have been able to get it open in the first place.

Regardless, opening the door had been an appalling lapse in judgment for an otherwise bright child. One second she'd been standing in front of it, cheeks tinged pink, breathing rendered shallow by triumph as she witnessed the two halves repell one another. The next she'd been shrieking, stuck in a whirlwind, the gaping dark maw of space opening up ahead.

Rose's concept of what dying entailed had been limited back then. She'd understood how to separate magnets - and would henceforth also know that you never did it without asking first, _stars, Rosie, what were you thinking_? - long before she furthered her understanding of death beyond something that happened to signal that a character wouldn't appear in a story again.

The bone deep dread that had washed over her like a tidal wave before Paige's hand pulled her back from oblivion had been primal, unthought. It would stick with her nevertheless, give her nightmares for months, if not years afterwards.

In hindsight, the nightmares had never truly stopped. The waking world had only grown to match them.

The second time Rose had feared for her life, she'd been eight. By then she'd understood what death entailed, as well as the fact that it would surround her always, until the day it closed icy fingers around her and carried her off. That had, conversely, been the same day she'd first become acquainted with grief.

Her parents had met young, he a race-pod repairman and aspiring inventor, she the daughter of the race track manager, nursing dreams of becoming a pilot herself. They'd married young, had children young. Died young.

Whenever Rose had enough heart to mull over the unfairness of it all, she would remind herself of one of the many useful adages life with the Resistance had drilled in her: doesn't matter how long you live for, but how well.

Paige had lived well, died a hero. Rose, for that that matter, had too insofar as the Resistance was concerned. If they never learned of her survival, would she become a character in a story shared and told and retold, same as everyone involved in the fall of the Empire? That would be nice. More uplifting a prospect, at least, than what awaited the Rose of flesh and blood.

She very nearly wished she'd died at Crait and been done with it. Just nearly,though. Because she still had hope.

A crash startled her from her thoughts. She craned her neck, straining her hearing.

Something was happening on the upper deck.

During her many hours of isolation confinement, Rose had seldom heard a peep from outside the room. Only once had she been able to make out a murmur of conversation, but it'd quieted in an instant and that had been it. No boots thudding down the corridors, no droids beeping, no doors slamming. Perfect silence, disturbed only by her breathing and, when boredom had truly settled in, off key singing.

Now there was sound, plenty of it, not outside but above. A sound she was intimately familiar with, having had it as the soundtrack of her life from age eight onwards.

Fighting.

The Resistance. The thought erupted, achingly bright, before she could tell herself to moderate her expectations.

She managed it after a while. Even if it was the Resistance, Rose reminded herself, they might not be there for her. Meaning that she needed a miracle happening as soon as yesterday, because if they weren't there to get her, the ship would probably end up scattered metal particles floating through space, as ships that got out of confrontations between both factions were prone to. Bad news for anyone still on it, in other words.

This would, she thought, be a great time to discover I got the Force.

 _Click_.

Rose tumbled forward with the smooth grace of a drunk Hutt, hands curling over her face so that she wouldn't break her nose against the floor. The whole time she'd be standing inches off the ground with her feet planted on two crossed bars. They'd provided more than adequate support while her restraints kept her in place but with those spread open she was left swaying, then swimming, then flailing and finally, after she'd greeted the incoming floor, spread out like a starfish as she struggled to catch her breath.

 _Alright_ , she told herself, once she'd massaged enough life back in her ankles and wrists to dare attempt to stand. Her body felt drowsy and weak from the long hours stuck motionless. Joints cracked and complained as she set them to work, blood appeared confused about where it was supposed to flow.  _Alright. Easy. Steady. Don't-_

She hung on to the contraption previously wrung around her ribcage to stop herself from falling right back down. The feeling was not unlike dangling from the edge of a cliff.

It subsided a while later, and in another minute she was able to stand upright and keep herself that way unsupported. The waste of time worried her. Unlike her restraints, the door hadn't decided to slam open as needed. Getting through that was the next step.

Rose limped foward, plotting how to tackle the twin metal panes, inches thick, joined so that only a thin line hinted at where they were meant to part. She pulled at each halve and looked for a lock she could pick - what with was a bridge to be crossed later.

There was no lock.

Rose froze. Then her face split in a grin.

She hobbled back to the slab, her mind halfway through dismantling it before her hands physically rested on it. Closing system on the restraints looked like the same, yes, awesome, great. Lovely lovely electromagnetic current, still active, judging by the way the halves of every restraint, locked apart to remain open, strained to meet. Tools. A spark in the dark.

She had about every resource she needed right there; the one problem was that there wasn't where she needed them to be.

The slab wouldn't be easy to move. It had been designed to allow for it, but whoever had put it together had done so under the reasonable assumption that it would get carted around by people with well developed byceps and over six feet tall. It took Rose another two minutes of huffing and sweating to push the it up to the door.

From there onwards, it was a matter of figuring out poles and angles. Magnetized locks had started as a fad sometime before she'd been born and fallen out of fashion within the next decade. They came in two varieties: those that employed pure magnetized ore and the more popular model that worked by sending an electromagnetic current running through your metal of choice.

There were three basic ways to crack them. Way number one was so easy she'd gotten to it as a small child: slide the halves in the direction opposite to the magnetic lines. This door did not allow for sliding - it'd be too much to ask that the First Order make it that simple for her - so #1 was right out.

Next, you could demagnetize the lock by heating it up or running an alternating current through it, elegant options that she didn't have the resources for.

That left her with way #3: apply a reverse polarity magnetic field to one of the halves of the door to separate them or disturb the field enough that they wouldn't be impossible to part manually. Way #3 was the least reliable option, as she had no way of knowing whether the magnetic field of the restraints was powerful enough to effect that of the door, but she wasn't in a position where she could afford to be picky.

"Don't let me down, you," she murmured, giving the slab one final push to turn it around and have it meet left portion of the door. She knew instantly that she'd gotten the poles right at least, and that the magnets would very probably be strong enough for what she had in mind. The slab pushed back against her so hard she nearly got thrown off balance.

She had to dig her heels in and rest her full weight against the metal to prevent it from skidding towards the other end of the room. It was an even bigger chore to get it positioned. By the time she saw the first hint of a slit appear between the two sides of the door, her arms felt about to pop out of their sockets and her hair, forehead and neck were drenched in sweat.

Yet there it was, at last! Quickly, she wedged the tip of her boot between the door and pressed the slab harder. Letting go at this stage would cost her half a foot. She breathed in and out through her nose, pushing harder. Easy. Steady. She had this. Hopefully. In the end it always came right back down to hope, didn't it?

"Yes!" she cried, jamming her leg, the slab and herself between the halves of the door as soon as enough of an opening had formed for all to squeeze through. The instant she tumbled on hands and knees into the corridor outside, the halves rejoined with a loud wham.

She'd have liked to catch her breath, but no time, no time, she'd wasted enough of it already. Abandoning the slab and dragging herself up on trembling legs, she let her eyes travel the length of the corridor. Empty. She didn't stop to wonder how or why it was empty. She ran, fast and hard, with the occasional backward slide thrown in, damn the First Order's obsession with keeping their floors perfectly waxed.

There was still a battle happening on some faraway floor, but the commotion of shouts and shots zinging became ever so faint as she trudged forward through the alike-looking halls. Shouldn't an alarm be sounding by now?

Rose slowed down, uncertainty causing her to waver momentarily. Maybe she wasn't being rescued, whether on purpose or as a side effect. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe the First Order was toying with her. Maybe they'd planted a tracker in her - they'd had more than enough time to do it while she lingered unconscious - and were allowing her go hoping that she'd lead them right to the Resistance. They'd be out of luck, too. She didn't have the faintest clue of where the others might have fled after Crait.

Still, did it matter why she'd been let loose on the ship, as long as she was loose and stood a chance of making it to the nearest escape pod?

She paused again, this time to laugh at herself. Two days ago she would have been aghast at that being her priority, placed above finding the other rebels and joining the fight. Two days ago she'd been hitting white faced men with a taser for having the exact same thoughts now sprinting through her head.

_What would P-_

Rose meant to live, thank you very much. She would do her best to make herself useful along the way, but she meant to live.

 _Run_ , she told herself. _You can figure out everything else later._

When she finally stumbled on a stormtrooper it almost came as a relief. She'd grown restless at the fact that save for the distant clamor of battle, she appeared to be stuck in a ghost ship.

There he was, though, back towards her, fidling with a door that looked like it'd been fried. Circular burn marks peppered the area around the lock, some still smoking faintly.

The stormtrooper took no notice of her. This should be the part where she snuck up on him and bludgeoned him over the head with something heavy. Unfortunately, there was nothing on hand that might serve for that purpose, which left her with two options: double back, wait for him to get the door open and leave, or sneak up and try to get her hands on the blaster hanging at his hip.

One option was brave. The other was sensible. Here and now, Rose thought she'd rather be sensible.

Step after step she slipped back into the corridor behind her, though not so far she lost sight of what the stormtrooper was doing.

He was in a hurry, his gestures quick, his breathing, amplified by the helmet, an arhythmic sequence of shallow puffs as he all but attempted to kick the lock open. When that, predictably, failed, he resorted to swearing at it.

Rose's eyebrows huddled together. In theory, stormtroopers were built from basic human stock like anyone else, and therefore liable to experiencing anger and needing to express it. In practice, you didn't expect them to swear. Not like that. She couldn't recall even Finn swearing like that around her.

The potty-mouthed stormtrooper paused his harassment of the door to fumble with his helmet, which he pulled off clumsily and set aside. Rose's frown, already deep as space by that point, grew another valley when she caught sight of short cropped dark hair streaked with gray, a matching mustache, stubble at least a week old and dark skin crisscrossed by fine wrinkles. A small crystal, azure blue and diamond shaped, shone on his right earlobe.

The likelihood of an old stormtrooper was already close to nil, but she'd never heard of a stormtrooper, any stormtrooper, wearing jewelry.

Swallowing everything inside her that chirped that she was taking a huge and unnecessary risk, Rose shuffled her feet forward a couple of steps, breathed in and called out:

"Hello?"

The man went still. One of his hands twitched, straining to contain a reflexive reach for his weapon. His head turned, revealing a perfectly put together and pleasantly inexpressive mask, rendered somewhat disjointed by a nose that looked like it had recently been bloodied.

He saw her, took in her face and clothes and friendly yet cautious smile and let the mask dissolve, heaving a sigh of relief.

"You don't happen to be any good at picking locks, do you?"  
  
Introductions were made after the lock lay defeated - it would have been easier if it hadn't gotten deformed by his attempts to blast it, but she didn't think it was worth it to tell the man that - and the questions both considered vital had been answered.

"Are you with the Resistance?"

"Am part of it, am not with them. The First Order got me and I just escaped from my cell."

"Same here. Is it the Resistance attacking?"

"Don't have the faintest idea."

"Did you open my cell door?"

"No, I thought you might have opened mine."

"Do you know where the escape pods are?"

"I was sort of hoping you'd know."

And so on and so forth until at long last they arrived at "I'm Rose," and "I'm Lando". By then they were three corridors ahead, no longer running but walking at a respectable brisk pace, because first among the things they'd settled on was a plan. Rose had landed the easy part. All she was required to do was look frightened.

It was a while before they were forced to put it to practice, but it had to happen eventually. An incoming stormtrooper came to a screeching halt upon spotting them. Insofar as as somebody wearing full body armor could express befudlement, he looked beffudled.

"What's this now?"

"Putting the prisoner back," the man named Lando grunted, pushing the end of the blaster between Ross's shoulderblades by way of demonstration. "Found her trying to steal an escape pod."

"What, she made it to deck 3? How?" The stormtrooper asked, astonished, before slapping a gauntlet against his visor and sighing. "Nevermind, of course a rebel would slip by unnoticed at a time like this. But what were you doing by the escape pods to begin with?"

Lando, who might or might not be used to these kinds of exchanges, delivered his reply without an ounce of hesitation.

"Checking for escaping rebels that might have slipped by unnoticed, at a time like this."

The other stormtrooper shook his head.

"You're insane. Didn't you hear Ki- the Sup- whatever we are supposed to call him now - might have gone that way?" At Lando's helpless shrug, he belted out a disbelieving laugh. "Crazy. Well, you wouldn't catch me risking a run in with sith grandspawn. Did you know they're saying he murdered Supreme Leader Snoke?"  
  
"Wouldn't surprise me," Lando grumbled. Rose had to get a grip on herself to stop from kicking him, but the stormtrooper failed to see her discomfort or, if he did, didn't appear to find it odd. "How's the fighting going?"

"All sorted out. The other squads weren't up to speed and following conflicting orders, but I think that's been cleared up. We obey General Hux until further notice."

"Right," Lando replied cheerfully. Then he whacked the other man over the head so hard his knees buckled.

Rose got pushed out of the way so that he could knee the stormtrooper in the groin, stumbled into the nearest wall and turned, mouth poised to demand what he though he was doing. By then the stormtrooper lay motionless in a heap.

Lando took his helmet off, quirked an eyebrow at her pale face and pointed down.

"Hurry up and get his armor. We'll have an easier time reaching deck 3 if we both pretend to be 'troopers."

"Ah-hem," Rose coughed, pointing at herself. "One problem. Do you see how tall I'm not?"

Lando considered her. She could tell that he hadn't factored in the height discrepancy at all. Tall people tended to not stop to think about details like that.

"Maybe if you tried standing on your toes..." But it was a lost cause and they both knew it. "Let's just move on before he wakes."

They moved on. More stormtroopers ran past them, but those didn't stop for a chat and the ones that did were in too much of a hurry to prod further when their casual 'Where are you off too?' got answered with 'General Hux asked to have the prisoner sent up.'

"I think I did this," Rose whispered, the next time they were alone in a stretch of corridor. Lando offered an inquisitive grunt. She suspected he was squinting at her under the helmet and couldn't blame him. "I may or may not have tried to create a bit of strife between General Hux and Kylo Ren, to push him towards, ah, deposing him. Crack the First Order from the inside out to make it easier for the Resistance to take it out, that sort of thing. I'm not sure if whatever is happening is a result of that, but..."

She trailed off at Lando's snort.

"Trust me, from the way I've seen Ben mop the floor with him a coup was due any day. I doubt he needed a lot of pushing." Which was about where her thoughts were headed, as much as she would have liked to take credit for engineering their convenient escape circumstances. "I'm not sure who I'd rather have in charge of this bunch of walking Empire throwbacks, to be honest. Darksider, joyless hall monitor... it's a toss up."

"Y-" Rose began. The appearance of a First Order officer on their left made her close her mouth, bite off the rest of her reply and turn her stare at the floor in a hurry. She could feel Lando tense up behind her and hoped fervently that he'd be up for this newest challenge. The officer beckoned them - him, wanting to have words. No option but to stop and listen.

"Where are you taking the prisoner?" the man demanded. He had a nasally, flute-like voice that grated at Rose's eardrums like sandpaper. He stared at her as if she were a speck of dirt. One of the other would have earned him her dislike. Both together almost felt like overkill.

"General Hux sent for her." The reply rolled off Lando's tongue, made effortless and nearly natural after the many times he'd repeated it. The officer nodded, something like satisfaction etching itself on his weasely face.

"Good. Pass on a message for me when you see him. The Resistance's Vice Admiral has at last decided to rejoin us the living. I understand that he's quite busy at the moment, but the sooner we sort out the b-"

"You mean Vice Admiral Holdo?" Rose interrupted, barging into the conversation uninvited and leaving the officer gawking at her as if a trash compressor had suddenly gained the ability of speech.

At length, he recovered. He bent over to hover closer to her face - between him and Kylo Ren and General Hux, Rose was growing convinced that the First Order had no sense whatsoever of personal space - and narrowed his mean little eyes at her.

"I mean the bitch who cut through the Supremacy. She's not deserving of a name. Just like you won't be deserving of a tongue you can use to mouth off with, after the General is through with you." Having delivered his piece and left her shaking - from ill suppressed anger, but let him think it was fright, as long as it got him away from her - the officer smiled smugly and whirled around, marching off. Lando had to shake her to remind her to resume their own trek. She faltered after the first couple of steps.

Bravery was fearing for others more than you feared for yourself.

"Lando?"

His sigh got amplified tenfold, but had most likely started loud.

"I have a bad feeling about whatever it is you are about to say."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the no show last week, y'all! I hope this chapter is long enough to make up for it ;)

General Hux stood at the bridge of command ship Eugeny, enjoying a piping hot cup of pepper tea and feeling light years more optimist about his future and life in general than he'd had for the last couple of days.

A rare smile formed on his lips as his eyes caught sight of a nearby screen, where footage of Luke Skywalker traipsing through the lower decks, lightsaber drawn, played on a loop. It was shoddily put together footage, trespassed by rough cuts and graininess. He hadn't thought it safe to entrust too many techs with the task of cobbling it together from old holo footage. Furthermore, in the end, as he'd smartly predicted, it didn’t matter that the images wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny.  Ren hadn't cared to look too closely. The second the cowl - that had been an inspired move by the tech who’s come up with it, as it made for fewer footage to alter as long as they took care to only show the man from the back - had dropped to show Skywalker's badly pasted in face, the no-longer-Supreme-Leader had been up and off like a shot, all but frothing at the mouth.

Shooting a mad wildebeest from the back when the target of their mindless rage lay in the opposite direction was, General Hux had been delighted to discover, a laughably simple task.

Unfortunately, that first moment of peaceful bliss he experienced since Supreme Leader Snoke had been cut down, kicking off his tenure as Ren's favorite chew toy and scapegoat, was doomed to be fleeting.

First a call came through, a stormtrooper informing him in a trembling voice that Ren had escaped and opened what looked like every door and lock on the ship, including those of holding cells and the cage of Supreme Leader Snoke's pet nexu. The messenger likely hadn't dared come up in person. The crew of the Eugeny had gotten used to bad news being met with Force choking, lightsabers waved in their faces and anything on hand broken off and thrown at their heads, because that had been the standard Ren’s behavior had set. 

General Hux had already decided that it would be an unwise policy to begin his reign as Supreme Leader - _nay_ , Emperor! - by copying his predecessor's mistakes.  He'd put the cup down, placed the saucer on the nearest flat surface, taken a deep breath and, rather than ordering the messenger to present himself to the nearest firing squad, seized enough rational thought to demand that they see to it that Ren was back in his cell within the hour or made a corpse, whichever was easier. Then he'd gone back to enjoying his tea.

It was his own hubris that'd done it. Hubris and vengeful blinders, curse him for taking advantage of Ren's greatest weakness only to fall prey to it himself the next second. He’d wanted time to plot out every excruciating way of paying back the boy’s gentle treatment before he made that unkept head roll. With the state he'd left him in, he'd been confident that Ren wouldn't be capable of breathing unaided, let alone muck about with unnatural powers. If not, encasing him in carbonite ought to have sufficed to keep him put.  He'd been particularly pleased with himself for coming up with that solution, at that, although it did grate him that in the heat of the moment he'd overlooked the delicious irony of his choice of prison. If he'd remembered he’d have leaned in as the smoke rose. Whispered ‘ _Like father, like son_ ,’ or something likewise equivalent to taking a handful of salt and smashing it against Ren's bleating, bleeding heart. Such a wasted opportunity.

Ah, well. It'd been a grosser lapse on his part that he'd underestimated Ren and the Force. A mistake he wouldn't make twice, as much as it irked him to forsake a creative, lovingly drawn out and, above all, humiliating execution.

He was on his second cup of tea and all but returned to his previous calm when he got disturbed once again. More communications had come through in the meantime to inform him that the nexu had been sedated before it did much damage, Vice Admiral Holdo, the one prisoner that mattered that they keep, had been unconscious in her cell still, that they were close to capturing the other two Resistance escapees and that Ren had been spotted heading for Deck 3, trailing a river of blood.

He'd commanded them to concentrate their efforts on Ren. The girl was useless - the only explanation he could find as to why she'd been found with FN-2187 aboard the _Supremacy_ was that the traitor couldn't bear to part with his side piece - and Calrissian was only on the ship in the first place because Ren had a mile long bone to pick with anyone who remembered him as a toddler. Ironic, considering that he'd seen him act out like one two thirds of all the time he'd been forced to endure his company, but oh well.

He'd been thinking about how pleasant it would be if Ren did him the favor of bleeding to death on his way to the escape pods, saving him the ammunition and manpower his capture would demand if he were in any state to put up a fight, when a stormtrooper ran in.

"Sir, we just got word that Vice Admiral Holdo is awake."

General Hux nodded. He'd expected it would be good news, if someone had dared come impart them in person. They weren't the good news he'd hoped for, however.

"Good, good. Have someone squeeze her for all she's worth and dispose of her." He lifted his cup to his lips for effect, paused, casually added: "And what else?"

"Ah," the stormtrooper began, "well, with the rebels we are-"

"Very close to recapturing them, yes, excellent. But Ren?" he pressed on, tracking the stormtrooper's movements as the man swallowed audibly and shuffled his feet. Quelling the urge to snap - if anything, Ren had been good for teaching him the perils of giving those under you ample reason to hate you - he forced his voice to take on a quasi-manic cheerfulness. "Out with it, son!"

The stormtrooper flinched, looking unsure of what to do with this kind of attitude from his superior officer, but at least he stopped shuffling.

" _He'sinViceAdmiralHoldo'scellsir!"_

General Hux blinked, slow and snakelike.

"Come again?"

"In Vice Admiral Holdo's cell. _Sir!_ " the stormtrooper repeated, this time with pauses to breathe, finishing with a stiff salute. General Hux, who'd heard him perfectly on the first go but had needed the extra couple of seconds to recover from his shock, snarled:

"What in the Force's name does he want with her?" To which the stormtrooper only managed a feeble excuse for a shrug, meant to convey that no one had felt inclined to ask a Force wielding madman with little to lose and no qualms about cutting down anyone in his path what his intentions were. General Hux, however, found the answer easily once he paused to think. He laughed in semi-delirious disbelief. "Oh, no, _of course_! I should have foressen it."

_". . . sir_?"

"Ren is trying to bribe his way back into the General Leia's good graces, of course. _Of course._ What does a child do when it has a boo boo? Go running to mommy so that she may kiss it better." He stood abruptly, causing the teacup to clink and shake. Some tea spilled. General Hux frowned, ticked off by the mess, but was back to the matter at hand in a blink. "Is he still in there?"

" _Ahhhh_ . . . . I believe so."

"Then let's make haste." He passed the stormtrooper in a whirlwind of spotless black fabric, his step sure and brisk, leaving the man shambling after him to catch up.

The Vice Admiral was not kept with the riff raff down below but in the medbay, not due to her high standing - high standing among the Resistance brokering no respect among the First Order and warranting a null amount of special treatment - but because it was the only way to ensure that she wouldn't shuffle off this mortal coil before she could be interrogated.  Access card flying fast in his hand and fingers dancing to input his personal code, General Hux all but sprinted through the security checks, shouting at every confused stormtrooper he ran into to form a barricade at the end of the hallway. They complied, shrugging and trading baffled head shakes.

It was good that he'd come down personally, he decided. If this was how hard they were working on Ren's recapture, small wonder the wretch had made it so far undeterred.

By now a small contingent rallied after him, blasters at the ready, whispering among each other. They barreled into the medbay as soon as the double doors slid aside. General Hux fell back, crossing his arms and smirking. After a moment, a trio of them came marching back.

"Sir, there is no one in there."

" _What!_ " he shouted, the veins at his temple throbbing so forcefully he experienced a moment of light headedness before coming back to himself, the nascent cracks in his mind welded together by incandescent ire. "You mean to tell me that he somehow got past you, came out carrying a woman hanging on to life by a string, and not one of you useless-"

"But the Vice Admiral is still in there, sir!" the stormtrooper on the far right stated, in a tone holding just the faintest suggestion that he wasn't convinced of the general's mental stability. The other two were quick to provide supporting nods. "We’re searching, but so far it doesn't look like the room was disturbed at-"

_Smoke._ There was smoke, suddenly, pale blue curlicues coming through the doors in a cloying scented avalanche while behind it, shouting erupted, followed by the unmistakable clang of armor hitting the ground.

General Hux cried out, more in shock than in warning, raised his arm to cover his nose and mouth with the sleeve, stumbled back before the cloud swallowed him and tripped on the hem of his cape, losing his footing and plummeting down. Gingerly, he got himself back up, pale eyes narrowing at the mouth of the medbay, where a lone figure now stood, wrapped in too much smoke and shadow to make out more than a sense of shape and tallness.

The stormtroopers with him had been caught by the cloud and rendered unconscious. If he survived this encounter, General Hux swore to himself, his first order of business would be to invest in air filters for their armor. The ones that'd stayed inside were likely dead or otherwise incapacitated. Straining to hear his own thoughts over the deafening pounding of his heart, he wondered whether it would be of any use to run.

The figure stepped forward, the _thud thud thud_ of heavy boots a doom bell tolling. It abandoned the cover of blue smoke, revealing armor, white and black, thankfully familiar. Relief washed over him. 

"What happened?" he demanded, struggling to prevent his voice from shaking.

The stormtrooper ignored the question, lifted his blaster, pointed it, shot - for a fraction of a fraction of a millisecond General Hux thought he might be aiming at something behind him, but realization dawned quick - and all the lights went out.

 

* * *

 

" _Argh_!" Lando sputtered, doubling over to cough and waving his arms to dissipate the smoke before he dared to utter a gasp, releasing the air he'd been holding for the past two minutes and trading it for new, only residually toxic one. Good thing that this particular halothane derivate wasn't one of those that stuck around in the atmosphere for ages. His lungs weren't as capable of taking a punishment as they'd once been and wouldn't have made it another minute in apnea before tearing at the seams.

An annoying fact Lando had become more and more aware of was that he'd gone and let himself get old. That was the crunch you were made to deal with when you had a talent for surviving, he supposed. You stayed alive. Staying alive for a long time meant that no matter how many exotic health tonics you knocked back and however many pushups you clocked in every morning to maintain a respectable degree of fitness, the slick machine that Lando Calrissian had once been would rust, abrade, even jam at times, making it only a matter of time before it all went kaput.

More and more often he'd been waking up with back aches. Catching himself wanting to take afternoon naps. Not remembering the last time he'd managed to empty a bottle of Correlian's finest whiskey on his lonesome. Looking at the young men and women that formed the bulk of the Resistance these days and sighing because they were _children_. He'd feel tired just from seeing them run around fighting, doubly so when he remembered that that had been him, once. That in a way it still was, only now the running, the fighting, all of it drained him.

Damn the First Order all the way to the Dark Side and back. They had no business making a man his age lead this kind of life. Damn Ben, too. Always and forever, damn Ben. And for that matter, damn Han for insisting that wanting to wear exclusively black at age seven was _'only a pha_ se'.

He sighed and tapped General Hux's prone form with the tip of his boot. Still breathing. He'd probably live. Damn himself, for that withered speck of honor that wouldn't let him shoot a man already down.

And, on another note . . . what was taking Rose so long? Hopefully she hadn’t run into any trouble. Or, the more likely option, had trouble run into her.

" _Beep beep bip bip beeeep_!"

He turned, startled, weapon drawn - at least his reflexes had yet to begin to suffer the vicissitudes of him turning into a withered old geezer - to relax at the sight of a multipurpose medical droid wheeling itself in, beeping and bopping insistently. Shape wise it resembled a massive, high tech coffin, a rectangular metal box with a padded top covered by a translucent dome meant for a body to be laid on.

Just his luck, he thought with grim relief. It would come in handy, what with Amilyn the way she was. He hadn't stopped to wonder what someone would look like after getting spat out of a ship that had torn through another ship at light speed, but now he'd seen the result with his own eyes, and it wasn't . . . it wasn't pretty, no. Far from.

However, this one droid was malfunctioning. Its radar and navigation system, at least, were shot. The side barraged into the wall as it tried to get in, and when it finally managed after two more tries, it rolled in sputtering, zigzag lines rather than straight ahead.

Still, it was what he had. He'd have to make do.

"Up we go, Amy!" he exclaimed, infusing his voice with upbeat encouragement on the off chance that the old girl could hear him. It was doubtful she did, though. She'd looked barely conscious even before he'd gone and shot open the halothane containers, giving her a nose full of the gas.

Still he spoke to her, making sure to lift her carefully. They'd all but bathed her in bacta, but her skin retained an oddly brittle consistency that led him to suspect a rougher touch would rip it clean off. Since he didn't know what to do with all the tubes and machinery they'd connected her to, he grabbed the smaller, portable ones, mounting them at her feet after placing her under the dome, and disconnected everything else.

_Now, to turn this thing on and find Rose_ , he thought, giving the chassis a hard kick. It worked on his trusty old radio about eighty percent of the time, no reason why it wouldn't...

" _Outch_!" the droid complained, in what was without a doubt a muffled girl's voice. Lando jumped. Then he stared, surprised, pleased and somewhat disbelieving all at once.

"Rose?"

" _Lando_? Is that you?"

"Of course it's me, who else would it be?"

"Sorry, had to make sure. You sound just like every other stormtrooper with that helmet on." Which was rather the point and had come in handy to convince General Hux to show him the way. "Can you open the right-side panel for me? I didn't expect it to be so dark in here and I'm having some trouble finding my screwdriver."

He opened it with a couple more kicks. Rose tumbled out of the metal body, rosy cheeked, hair sticking out and smelling faintly fried. He helped her up.

"That's why it took you so long?"

"I had to find a disguise that fit me before I could follow you, right?" she told him with a shrug, patting the metal frame affectionately. Then she caught sight of Vice Admiral Holdo laying on it. A soft, choked sound of horror escaped her. "Oh, _she_ . . . she doesn't look well."

"No," Lando agreed, tone dejected. "Please tell me that the droid still mostly works for life support purposes."

"No. _No_." She shook her head, swallowing the urge to dry heave. "I had to gut it to make space for myself, I didn't realize she'd be . . . but I can try to get another."

Lando shook his head. Complicated things were going on in there, Rose was sure. He regarded the Vice Admiral for a second or three before he too, swallowed hard and loud, quelling whatever struggle took place within.

"No. We need to make it to Deck 3 now, this whole detour already cost us time we don't have. If we take her like this she may make it. If we delay the escape it's more than likely that none of us will. Get back in there and follow. Turn off the beeper, we want to be stealthy."

"No problem, I gutted it too earlier."

"It made noises coming in."

"That was me doing them. For, you know, realism purposes."

" _Oh._ Really?"

" _Beep, beep, bip_ ," Rose said.

"Well, never mind realism right now. _Stealth_!" Lando slammed the door closed, rendering the world once again small, oppressive and all of it shadows. With her penchant for wanting to hide in whichever hole presented itself when faced with danger, Rose hadn't expected to experience claustrophobia to the degree she did, locked in there with next to no room to move, knees close to her body and jammed under her chin, one hand pressed flat against each side of the box.

She steered by swaying her body to and fro, a task made easier now that she had Lando to whisper 'turn left' and 'door on your right' and 'other droid at nine o'clock' rather than being forced to guess what her surroundings looked like and hope for the best. They weren't stopped twice. The first time they encountered stormtroopers Lando yelled that there'd been an attack in the medbay and General Hux had been wounded, sending them rushing past them instead of asking further questions, like why hadn't there been an alarm and where was he taking the prisoner. The second time it was only two men, and she heard the _zing zing_ of shots fired, followed by metal armor banging on metal floor.

The third encounter was where it all went wrong, because by the third encounter an alarm had been sent blaring through the ship and there were not one, not two, but no less than twenty stormtroopers - so Lando told her, swearing under his breath - blocking access to Deck 3.

"Halt!" One of them cried, presumably pointing a weapon. Rose thought. Presumably Lando also thought, but her thinking churned out the rough shape of a plan before his did.

"Lando? The dome covering the Vice Admiral, what is it made of?"

"Standard silica and osmium blend, is my guess."

"Oh-kay. How thick is it?"

"About three inches." Inside her box, Rose nodded fervently. Three inches of osmium, even if it wasn't pure osmium, was promising. Lando lowered his voice further. "Do you have a plan"

"I do, but I don't think you'll like it."

"I've stayed alive and kicking to this day by playing along with plans I didn't like much. What do we have to do?"

She told him. He didn't like it.

 

* * *

 

"I DIDN'T THINK MY FIRST TIME PLAYING RUMBLE-PINS WOULD GO LIKE THIS!"

"CLOSE THE DOOR CLOSE THE DOOR CLOSE THE DOOR!" For someone who had started out so disliking and with so little faith in her madcap proposal, Lando had ended up having too much fun with his role in it by far. She would have sworn she'd heard him issue a jubilant _'Whoop!_ ' as they crashed through the stormtrooper's fiery barricade but then again, her ears were ringing so badly and her head had suffered so much whiplash that its contents had turned to scrambled eggs, making it not out of question that she'd imagined it.

What she didn't imagine for sure was his radiant face when he pulled away the side panel, stormtrooper helmet gone, nor the size of his smile. She all but fell out, rolled herself into fetal position and remained that way for a couple of seconds, breathing in and out, willing her stomach to stop roiling and the world from spinning before her eyes. She felt as if she'd come out of a blender, which was about as good a description of what she'd gone through as any.

"The Vice Admiral," Rose began, heaving a bit between breaths.

"Alive," Lando told her, the _'I just don't know for how long'_ unsaid but writ plain in his at once sober expression. Still, _alive_. Alive was good. Alive was the best any of them could hope for. _Healthy_ and _well_ were only accessories in circumstances such as theirs. "The dome held, not a single shot got through, but I still don't think it was that great an idea to use this thing as a battering ram with her on it. Who knows what inner damage she sustained from getting shoved into an armored squadron at high speed."

"It was the only plan we had time for," Rose mumbled back. She should get up. They were so close to making it that she'd hate herself if they got caught because her legs felt too feeble to hold her upright. "How long will the door-"

"The pods are right there, so long enough," he promised, extending a hand, which she gratefully seized. _Everything happens for a reas_ on, Rose thought, thoughts spinning still. Wasn't that the old adage that usually came after _never lose hope_? It could be that this was why she'd been captured. To save the Vice Admiral and return her to the Resistance. To become - though this was perhaps getting ahead of herself - that rare thing that was a hero who'd turned into one for living victorious rather than dying in a blaze of glory.

And then she saw the pods.

And then she spotted, some distance away, corpses that Lando and her hadn't made, stacked up in a neat pile with all their necks turned at a 180° angle. Stormtroopers. Two black uniformed officers. But still.

And then Lando made a face, his hand flying to his ear, where the blue crystal earing had gone from a dull glow to lit as if set on fire heartside out.

"L- _ando_?" she stammered, reading the fear, the voice arresting, gaze deadening dread he didn't bother, couldn't hope to disguise. "What's wrong?"

"Ben." He squeezed his ear. Closed his hand around the lobe, failing to trap the glow, which cut thought skin and flesh and bone as if they were made of clear glass, its shine magnified rather than subdued. " _He's here_."

"What? Who’s Ben?"

"Ben Solo!" he all but growled, stopping his futile attempts at hiding the earing to seize her arm with one hand and push the multipurpose bearing the Vice Admiral forward with the other. "We need to go, now!"

"Ben Solo," Rose repeated. She'd heard that name before, in recent times even, but still it took her a moment for the penny to drop. Her mouth made a perfectly round O. "Wait, you mean Kylo Ren?"

"Yes that's the Sithspawned - forgive me Han, 't wasn't your fault, you did your best - brat I'm talking about. Now _go go go_ , move!" This time he pushed and this time Rose resisted, struck. Starstruck, in fact, because another penny had just gone _pling_ , leading her to connect a sequence of dots that by all rights she ought to have connected a long while ago.

" _Wait_. Lando. _The_ Lando? Lando Calrissian?"

Lando arrested what appeared to be an impending heart attack for the time it took to look taken aback by her bubbly excitement and preen ever so slightly in response, despite the fear still etched on his everything.

"That's the name. Heard of me, have you?"

"Lando Calrissian the famous war hero?" Here he cringed. Rose got the feeling that she'd unclogged some unpleasant memory that he'd rather keep repressed and rushed to explain herself. "I'm sorry, it's just that I've heard so many stories . . ."

"Yeah, they are a lot of stories floating around these days," he agreed, staring ahead at seemingly nothing. "Would that I could have been half the man that most of them paint me as."

"But-" But here he covered her mouth, speaking slowly and seriously.

"Look here, Rose. The boy who was once like a son to me is somewhere near and if he sees us, he'll kill you like _this_." He snapped his fingers, pointing them at the dead stormtroopers for added emphasis. "And you'll be the lucky one, because I've had him tell me in abundant detail what he wants to do to me, and trust me, it's about as pretty a picture as old Amykins over there. So please, come back down from whatever cloud you've floated up to and help me out. We're on the home stretch, let's not have it all have been for nothing."

"Yes. _Yeah._ Sorry. But-" This time she gave him no opening to interrupt and pointed at the pods, which presented an issue she'd spotted the second she'd laid eyes on them. An issue which made it unlikely that the sunny scenario where she returned to the Resistance radiant, a hero and a winner, would pan out quite like that. "These are single person pods. There's three of us."

Lando shrugged.

"Bit of a tight fit, yes, but that shouldn't be a problem, considering that you managed to squeeze yourself in the carcass of a med droid."

"True, but what worries me isn't us fitting. It's the oxygen." That one gave him pause. She could tell he was considering it, but for speed’s sake rattled off the points that needed making anyway. "We don't expect a Resistance ship to come by and collect us, we have no idea if we are flying near inhabited or inhabitable planets, we may end up stuck in the pod for days. The typical amount of oxygen in those things is just enough to last a grown human male about two days and a half. If there's three of us breathing it, we better hope we get somewhere in much less than twenty four hours, otherwise..."

"Got it. You take one and take Amy with you, I'll take one and provide cover when they start shooting. Because we better count that they will start shooting as soon as they catch wind of the pods leaving the bay."

Rose shook her head.

"I should be the one providing cover. No-" She raised a hand, knowing she was about to be argued with in the name of honor and heroism and perhaps even gallantry, because this was Lando Calrissian and all of that should be expected, but refusing to even allow him to get started. "My sister Paige was the best bomber pilot the Resistance ever had and she taught me just about everything I know about flying. And you, you're _the_ Lando. Vice Admiral Holdo needs urgent medical care and you have a lot more connections and resources, I'll bet, to make sure she gets it. It makes every sense that you should be the one she goes with."

"Rose-" But she'd moved on already, the mouse in her running round and round in a wheel, made useful at long last. Maybe she wouldn't live. Maybe this little pod that she was picking out for herself would turn out to be her coffin. _Die to save what you love, the cause you believe in._ It sounded by far a better fate that what she'd imagined was coming for her an hour ago - _die because the First Order has discovered you are worthless to them_. Not ideal, yet a definite step up.

She helped Lando wheel the Vice Admiral into their pod, hearing none of his arguments as to why she should let him take the other . And then it was time, because they'd actually run out of it a long while ago and in a minute they would have either Kylo Ren or the stormtroopers banging on the doors barging in to thwart their grand escape. Time to close the doors on each other.

Time to fly. Probably time to die. Still, hope remained always.

"Lando?" she asked, a moment away from letting the door slam. "If this goes all wrong and I don't make it, can you do something for me?" Likely her words had just made him even more cross at the prospect of allowing her to do what she was doing, but she felt compelled to deliver them anyway. It was her choice. All her choice. He didn’t need to like it, he just needed to do this one small thing for her in return. "There's a rebel who used to be a stormtrooper called Finn. If you ever see him, can you tell him . . ." _Oh, stars. No tears, Rose. No tears_. "Tell him that he was a good friend. Tell him that I'm sorry I won't have the chance to try for more than fri- no, _wait, wait!_ Don't tell him that. Tell him that in the end I changed my mind about what people who steal escape pods are worth. Tell him that I wish him all the happiness he can get and hope that he finds his girl. That's all . . . no, wait, again.” Here she paused, because this was a request both selfish and self-aggrandizing, although hopefully the unselfish deed she was about to perform would offset it. “ _Erm._ Can you tell everyone else that I was very brave and that I said something very beautiful and inspiring before I went? You’ll just have to make it up, because I can’t really think of anything right now, I’m afraid."

He smiled. He looked like he might cry, too, but she doubted he actually would. This was a man who had lost too many important things to tear up easily.

"So you’d like to be a story?"

She swallowed. She’d like to stay alive and live to a ripe old age, if not with Finn, then with whoever else life ended up presenting her with, in a time without war and lives wasted. But there was doing what you liked and there was doing right, and bravery was choosing the latter even if it made her mind clogged with static and her hands tremble madly.

"Yeah. Something like that."

"I’ll do it if you give me your word that if you’re the one who makes me, you won't turn me into another one. I’m a character in enough stories already and I don’t think there’s one of them I like," He paused, let his smile twist into something somewhat less sad. "And I also want you to promise that if by some miracle all three of us make it out alive, you'll help me convince Amy to buy us drinks once this whole mess is settled."

She laughed. A bit crazily and a bit desperately, but she laughed. The last person she might ever see would remember her laughing. That was something, wasn’t it?

"Promise is promised."

"I'll hold you to it. Fly safe, Rose."

She nodded, her throat painfully tight. The door closed on Lando, drowning her in the pitch black of the pod. She took a deep breath, found the pilot’s seat, made herself at home in it and felt around until she found the button that made the control panel lit up, silver and yellow and red. So many buttons, so many things flashing. She hadn't lied when she'd stated that Paige had told her everything she knew, but neglected to say that what she knew wasn't anything to write home about.

_Deep breaths, deep breaths_. She could do this. Taking off was straightforward, at least. Push this button and that one, both clearly labeled. Plunge herself into starlit space, grab the controls, slow the fall so that the other escape pod, twin to her own, could zoom past and remain ahead of her, safely shielded. Anything that came their way would hit her pod first.

There was a brief second where she let pink lenses slip onto her eyes and entertained the possibility that they might get themselves far away sooner than the First Order discovered that they'd taken the pods.

Then she heard it.

It was a lie that there was no sound in space. Some things you could not unhear, and she knew the sound a Class-Y hammershield torpedo made when readying itself to come knocking. The green panel on front of her blinked like mad, showing trajectory lines, distances measured in dwindling numbers, a countdown in the upper right corner. Deep breaths, deep breaths, oxygen saving be damned. No way to escape that thing, because if she moved aside it would hit the other pod, but at least it would stop with hers.

Deep breaths. Last breaths.

"See you soon, Paige," she whispered, taking her hands from the controls, folding them across her lap, closing her eyes -

\- and getting bodily ripped out of her chair the very next second by another hand, belonging to an arm, belonging to a body attached to a face that had made itself familiar, albeit the last face she'd expected to be confronted with on an escape pod that was truly more of an escape-this-cruel-reality pod on a one way journey to oblivion.

Kylo Ren landed in the seat he'd evicted her from, grasped the controls she'd forsaken and, mouth a bleeding, deranged gash full of firmly gritted teeth, spun the pod around, flying it casually towards the incoming torpedo.

He knocked her out clean almost as an afterthought, but not before Rose saw the world explode.


End file.
